Creating images for your blog

Images make your blog stand out. No matter how great your content is, readers need something to look at, even if its just a blog banner. If I’m writing a blog about a place I’ve visited or an event that I want to share pics of then of course i’ll include a few images within my text. However, a short, simple blog post doesn’t always need to be surrounded by images.

My favourite website

I was told about a website which you can use for free called Canva. This is something that me and my friend still use today to created banners for both of our blogs. You need to create an account, but the site is very easy to use and there is no subscriptionn necessary. There are so many free options available to you on the site and you really can create anything you want. There are some options to use images that you can pay for, but I’ve never done this and I really don’t think its necessary anyway!

I’ve used Canva to create every banner for every blog I have written on this site and you can create so many products using it. There are size templates for social media, presentations, and graphics. You can create layers and edit the opacity and I’d liken it to a more simple version of Photoshop.

The other thing I love is that there is a free app too, so you can even create a blog banner on the go.

Image Tips

A while back I wrote about blogging for beginners which you can read here.

Here are my top 5 tips for creating a banner image for your next blog post using Canva

Don’t make your image too crowded, you want to attract a reader with a good image, but if its too busy they might avoid your content
Too many colours can be confusing. Stick to a colour palette. This doesn’t have to be a continuing colour palette with every banner you make, but it could be ? (theres an idea!)
Switch it up! Sometimes I use photographs, selfies, or just create a simple block colour banner. There’s no harm in making every one different, plus it’s really fun to experiment. I’ve also started using the Apple pencil to draw images on my ipad and transfer these into Canva to use on banners.
Be wary of stock photos – stock photos are free images that you can use and you can find them on some sites mentioned in by ‘blogging for beginners post’. They’re easily accessible and can look very professional, but just remember that everybody else can access and use these images too so you might see them on a lot of blogs.
Take a step back and really look at your image, does it look great or does it look all over the place? I like to use slightly opaque boxes behind text to frame it and make the text stand out.

Take a look at the images i’ve created below. These were all done using Canva and took me less than 5 minutes to make. Sure most of them are simple, but sometimes that can be the most effective outcome.